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Modern supply chains are being revitalized in nearly every respect through the application of big data, the Internet of Things, distributed ledgers, and augmented reality. These technologies drive new levels of transparency, agility, and efficiency for a wide range of supply chain players, from raw materials providers to manufacturers to distributors and logistics providers.

The purpose of the Accord Supply Chain Working Group is to produce open source tools and specifications to bolster supply chain transformation with smart legal contracts. Fundamental to this end is to integrate automated contracts and the contracting process directly into the sourcing, production, and distribution value chain. These improvements are reducing the costs, risks, and other inefficiencies associated with creating comprehensive and enforceable contracts, having consistent upstream and downstream terms and conditions, compliance with applicable practices and rules, and allocating business continuity, inventory, security and other risks.

Smart legal contracts also address problems that stem from erroneous pricing and other terms, warranty and relationship management, and the administration of numerous disparate documents and processes in a given supply chain.

The Supply Chain Working Group will seek to build upon existing technology with new use cases, studies, and specifications applicable specifically to the open source implementation of smart legal contracts. Existing implementation of blockchain technology in supply chains, for example, seeks to automate payment upon delivery, track the provenance of goods, manage identity, and create a widely accessible ledger of data and transactions to enhance operations. Smart legal contracts tie together these activities and add the legal layer required to make the transactions enforceable, determine ownership and liabilities, and related legal issues.